Perry readies assault on Romney

After weeks battling questions about how he plans to salvage his listing presidential bid, the Texas governor has finally started spelling out an answer. It involves opening his $15 million campaign war chest, hitting Mitt Romney harder and moving to reclaim the role of the populist conservative outsider in the race.

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Perry will deliver a policy address Tuesday in South Carolina outlining his support for a national flat tax — a proposal that for the first time extends beyond his record in Texas. His campaign has reserved statewide television airtime in Iowa to start as early as this week.

Perhaps most important, Perry has brought on board a new group of media consultants known for their brass-knuckled tactics and sharp read on the GOP base. Joe Allbaugh, a former top aide to President George W. Bush, added major national heft to the Perry team by signing on as a senior adviser.

It all adds up to a course correction that may give Perry his best shot at getting back into contention with Romney, the sometime GOP front-runner whom Perry attacked forcefully in last week’s Nevada GOP debate.

Expect plenty more where that came from, say strategists familiar with Perry’s growing team.

“The Perry folks are undergoing a reboot of sorts after last week’s debate, where they are moving to make this a two-man race,” said conservative strategist Keith Appell, who worked on Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s 2010 campaign with brand-new Perry advisers Tony Fabrizio, Curt Anderson and Nelson Warfield.

Appell predicted the fresh blood would help the Texan wage a more focused and aggressive campaign.

“They are all kindred spirits with the Perry people in that they are all Washington outsiders who aren’t afraid to take on the establishment,” Appell said. “It will soon be Mitt Romney’s turn to feel like a piñata.”

At a minimum, the hires soothe donors who have grown worried about investing in a troubled campaign. At most, they signal a major change-up.

Fabrizio, Anderson and Warfield are all veterans of the Bob Dole 1996 campaign with Perry top strategist Dave Carney — who is no stranger to hardball tactics himself — meaning they’re not just getting to know each other now. And Allbaugh is a veteran name that the GOP donor community is familiar with.

Perry staffers have played down suggestions that adding team members represents an internal shift for the campaign, and press secretary Mark Miner said only that Perry was “putting the resources and team in place to run an effective and credible campaign.”

But Perry’s new consultants are a roster of some of the most nationally seasoned and toughest names in the Republican media world. The Scott campaign was among the most searingly negative — and effective — message machines of the 2010 cycle, tearing through two well-liked statewide officeholders with a barrage of self-funded attack ads.